Hydrogen is a plentiful, clean, non-polluting fuel. Hydrogen is currently used in many industries, and the US demand for hydrogen is approximately 140 billion cubic feet per year and growing. However, hydrogen is explosive at 4% in air. Therefore, it is critical to measure, monitor and control hydrogen wherever it is used.
In the gasochromic art where sensors and measurement instrumentation for hydrogen gases detect and/or measure hydrogen, typically there is required a portable sensing device, a kit (where hydrogen gas detection and/or measurement is required in existing equipment), and sensor heads installed at points where hydrogen leaks are possible, or where monitoring is necessary (i.e., in internal combustion engines which operate using hydrogen as a fuel).
The problems associated with current H2 gasochromic devices is that these devices are not of adequate durability in that they degrade quickly with cycling and time, are too moisture sensitive, and react too slowly in response to the presence of H2 to produce an optical absorption change with a lengthy real time constant in the vicinity of 30 seconds.